


The Exiled

by DarthNickels



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ben Solo Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, As is tradition, Darth Vader Lives, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Gen, It Takes a Village to Raise a Child, Leia has an awkward family vacation with her estranged father, Post ROTJ AU, Vader is a wise hermit, waldeinsamkeit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-02-09 07:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12883155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthNickels/pseuds/DarthNickels
Summary: Leia has tried everything to help her baby son. She has turned to every expert on the Force she knows-- all but one.(Ben and Grandpa go camping)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Formerly published on tumblr, now collected here.

The ship hovered over the forest clearing for a moment, hanging suspended in the air—as if it was hesitating along with its pilot— before gently alighting on the planet’s surface. Leia turned to her passenger, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat with his knees drawn up to his chin.

               “Ben?” she called, softly. Sometimes, she felt as if she were calling out to her son across a vast distance. “Ben? Are you ready?”

               Ben looked at her with large, solemn eyes, nodding once.

               “You’re not in trouble,” she said, unbuckling her safety restraint. _Though Force knows I might be._

“Okay,” Ben replied, like he didn’t quite believe her.

               “We’re here to see—“ Leia stopped, unsure of how to go on. She had lied to her son more than she’d ever wanted to—more than she ever could have dreamed of doing, once upon a time. It galled her to lie to him anymore.

               “—someone important,” she finished at last, lamely. She would lie to her son just a little more. “For advice.”

               “Because of what’s wrong with me,” Ben said, softly, his voice heavy with unspoken misery. Leia thought her heart would break. She reached over and took his head in her hands, planting a soft kiss on his forehead.

               “There’s no shame in asking for help,” she said, to herself as much as him. He looked up at her, unhappiness written in every line of his face. “For me, as much as for you.”

               “Nobody else helped me.”

               Leia shut her eyes. She took Ben in her arms, holding him for a long moment—resisting the urge to stay there, holding him, before taking off and leaving this planet—

               _and its inhabitant_

               --behind forever. But she was here for Ben’s sake—for this one last chance for her son, she would stay.

               “Uncle Luke thinks he will,” she said, softly, in his hair. “And we owe it to Uncle Luke to hear him out.”

               Ben pursed his lips. “But you don’t,” he said, matter-of-factly. He looked at her again—that eerie, knowing look, a look alien to a child’s face. “You’re…afraid.”

               That was enough. Leia stood, abruptly, taking in a slow breath. “Fear must never stop us from reaching our goals, Ben.” She held out a hand to him. “Come on. We’ll want to be unpacked before dark.”

               He was there, waiting, when she came down the ramp. She knew he would be—Luke said he could have sensed her presence from another world away. Leia could have done that, landed on the other side of the planet, given herself more time—

               But she was too desperate to give herself to cowardice. Not any more, at least.

               It was strange to see him now, bereft of cape and armor. Not quite as jarring as the first time his helmet was removed in Leia’s presence—sunlight had eased the network of scars on his face and skull, faded but not erased. The sleeves of his tunic were cut away at the shoulders, revealing thickly muscled arms that gave way to his upgraded prosethetics. He still forewent synthskin, leaving his arms shinning dully in the fading sunlight. He had set aside his inky black for soft brown and cream, an eerie mirror of the uniform Luke had adopted for his new Jedi Order.

               His eyes were blue.

               “Leia,” he said, almost reverently. He looked up at her, as though he were seeing a ghost. She didn’t answer—couldn’t bring herself to.

               “Your visit is unexpected,” he offered, in the tense silence.

               “Luke doesn’t know I’m here,” she said. _Without witnesses, I could have backed out_. “I have business that is—just with you.”

               Vader’s face went flat—her stomach twisted at how it reminded her of Ben. A bland mask over an ocean of seething fury. “You’ve had no _business_ with me.”

               “No,” she agreed. “But I do now.”

               Vader tilted his head back, but said nothing. She would have to reveal her hand first.

               “Ben,” she called softly, “come here.” There was a moment of hesitation before Ben dutifully appeared at her side, grasping her hand. He always was shy around strangers.

               “Is this--?” Vader asked, almost breathlessly.

               “Ben,” Leia said, trying to steady herself. “Say hello to your grandfather.”

               Ben’s head shot up, his eyes wide. “You said my grandfather was dead.”

               “What do you sense?” Leia asked, gently. “Am I telling the truth?” Ben hesitated, but nodded.

               Leia heard the stead tread of Vader’s boots against the ramp, heard them coming closer—she was grateful there was no accompanying rasp of respirator, nothing to bring her back to that first fateful meeting over a decade ago. Leia steeled herself and turned, straightening so she could face her unlikely ally.

               Vader was staring down at Ben, his expression unreadable. Leia stretched out, hesitantly in the Force and winced—she could just sense the swirling maelstrom, just on the other side of Vader’s shields. Ben was too sensitive to be exposed to that, if the dam broke—

               But Vader’s mental wall held. He knelt, slowly, as if he thought Ben might bolt at a sudden move—he wasn’t entirely wrong. He extended his hand; it was large, the metal worn and dull. Ben stared at it, curiously, then looked up and met Vader’s eyes.

               “We are well met, young one,” Vader intoned, solemnly. Stripped of his vocoder but not fully healed of damage to this throat, his voice was raspy and faint—perhaps as much from disuse as from injury.

               Leia thought, for the first time in her memory, she heard it quaver slightly.

               Ben was looking up into Vader’s face, his brow just slightly creased in thought. He broke his gaze for a moment, glancing down, lips pursed—then rested his hand on Vader’s outstretched palm, allowing himself to be caught in Vader’s massive grip.

               “Hello,” Ben answered, politely. “I think I dreamed about you.” He watched Vader, closely—he knew those words had made so many of his friends and their parents immediately uncomfortable—

               “Indeed,” Vader said. “I have often dreamed of you.”

               Ben offered him a small, but painfully hopeful smile.  

               The planet reminded Leia vaguely of Endor—the trees were thick and squat, and twisted gnarled with age. The place felt vast to her, roots and branches entwined together over eons to create an intricate web.

               Looking at the few patches of sky visible through the net, Leia felt inescapable may have been a more apt choice of words.

               “Why have you come here?” Vader asked, hefting one of her supply crates (peace offerings) onto his shoulder with ease. Whatever ephemeral softness Ben had inspired in him was now gone.

               “Ben,” Leia said, “go inside and get your things together.”

               “But—“

               “Let’s get settled in. Then I’ll explain everything.” Ben hesitated, looking back up at Vader with an almost greedy curiosity.

               “One,” Leia said, gravely, “two—if I get to three—“

               Ben reluctantly stomped up the ramp. Leia waited until his footsteps had gone a convincing distance into the Falcon before speaking.

               “I need your help,” she admitted. The words were rushed, jumbled from the strength to quell every instinct she had and say them allowed.

               She wasn’t able to meet his eyes.

               Vader’s expression was stony. “I was told the Republic had no more use for my services,” he replied. There was a deep, abiding resentment in his words that Leia found off-putting.

               “You aren’t listening to me,” she managed to force out, between gritted teeth. “I’m not _here_ with the New Republic.” She forced herself to look at Vader directly in the face—to see if she could find any trace of the man her brother was so happy to call _father_.

               “ _Ben_ needs your help,” she said, firmly.

               The words seemed to strike a chord in Vader—he looked past Leia’s shoulder, into the cavernous hull of the Falcon, craning his neck as if to catch another glimpse of his grandson.

               “Luke has honored his promise,” he said, flatly. “I have seen no holos of the boy, nor heard any news of him since the day of his birth.”

               “Do you blame me, for wanting to keep him away from you?” Leia asked, sharply. Vader was silent, his face set in a hard expression that betrayed nothing of the distant simmering anger she still felt within him.

               “No,” he ground out. “You did well to deny me.”

               _Of course I did_ , Leia thought to herself. “I’m not here to apologize for it,” she said aloud.

               “Then why are you here?” Anakin pressed. “How can I be of any use to this child, who I have never so much as _seen_ —“ Vader must have noticed her expression and cut himself short, folding his arms across his chest.

               “I thought if I kept Ben away from you I could protect him from your influence,” Leia said, acidly. “But I was wrong. He—“ she stopped short. “Something is casting a shadow on our lives. On Ben.”

               “You think I have something to do with it.”

               Leia didn’t answer.

               “I have done everything you asked,” Vader said. The bitterness in his voice ran deep. “I have left you alone—“

               “And I thought that would be enough to keep him free from your legacy—but the Skywalker line breeds true.” She set her jaw, forcing herself to admit the words: “he’s _like you_.”

               Vader stiffened. “How?”

               Leia swallowed. “He’s sick,” she said, lowering her voice. “It’s not his fault.”

               “You think it’s mine.”

               _Can you really deny it?_ Leia wanted to shout, but fought to keep from losing her temper.

               “When Luke and I fight,” she began quietly, “he tells me you’d give anything to go back and change your path. He says I should believe you, because its brought you nothing but misery.”

               Vader’s pressed his in a hard line, but he said nothing.

               “You can’t change the past,” Leia went on. “But you can make things different now—“

               Ben reappeared, standing silently beside Leia and clutching his pack to his chest. Leia put a hand on his head, and met Vader’s stare.

               “Will you try?”

               Vader shifted his hold on the crate, and said nothing for a long moment.

               “There is much you do not know,” he said, finally. “And you understand even less.”

               He bent over and reached out with his free hand, gently plucking Ben’s pack from his hands. He stood upright again—Leia couldn’t help but think how strange he looked, with a child’s pastel-colored bag hanging from his metal grasp.

               “I will do what I can for you,” he said, finally. He turned and began marching off into the forest—even now, carrying her luggage, he walked with a military purpose.

               He paused, glancing over his shoulder. “Come,” he said, “work quickly and you may see the lightning beetles come out at dusk.”

               Ben didn’t need to be told twice. He scurried ahead of Leia, settling into a quick trot to try and keep up with Vader’s long strides. Ben clearly felt he had been waiting patiently for answers long enough, and launched into a string of questions.

               “How come you live in a forest? Do you live in a tree like a wookiee? Where do you get your groceries from? Why….”

* * *

 

               Luke had told her a little bit about Vader’s living situation—how he’d had to work to convince his father to stop sleeping upright in his starfighter, how they’d worked together to construct a rough but sturdy cabin in a forest clearing. Leia and Ben would be staying in the room Luke usually occupied on his visits, and she was secretly glad of that. The warm, calming energy her brother left behind would be good for both her and Ben.

                 She needed some of that strength now. In the common room, Ben’s questions were only gaining steam, despite Vader’s short, clipped answers.

               “Why do you live by yourself on a planet where no one else does?” Ben asked.

               “I am not welcome anywhere else,” Vader rumbled. Leia resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He was as subtle as ever.

               “Why?”

               “Because I have done things.”

               “What things?”

               “That is a question for your mother.”

               Leia could almost hear the scowl in Ben’s voice from the other room. “She told me you were dead.”

               Leia felt a tongue of Vader’s anger lash at her shields, but his voice stayed steady: “A trick she learned from Kenobi.”

               “Who’s Kenobi?”

               “Ask your mother.”  

               Leia felt Ben’s mood go sour. “She keeps secrets from me. But it doesn’t matter, because I know them.”

               “Your connection to the Force is strong and uninhibited.”

               “What is ‘uninhibited’?”

               Vader’s boots (and, Leia suspected, his joints) creaked as he knelt down next to Ben. She was watching from the door frame now, warily. She opened her mouth as Vader rested a hand on the top of Ben’s head, but held herself back. She had asked for his help—she couldn’t pull back from her gamble now.

               “Has no one taught you how to shield yourself?”

               Ben looked down at the floor. “Yes.”

               “Then why don’t you?”

               Ben looked at his feet and said nothing. Vader stood, taking longer to rise to his full height than Leia would have thought— _I suppose even Darth Vader gets old_ , she thought to herself.

               “Will you tell me tomorrow?” Vader asked.

               Ben’s voice was very small: “Maybe.”

               Vader placed a hand against Ben’s back—he started, but Vader’s touch was gentle.

               “Then I will ask you tomorrow,” he said, solemnly. Ben smiled.

               Vader gently pressed against Ben’s back, turning him to face the window.

               “Look,” he said, pointing.

               The light was fading outside, the sun of Vader’s lonely planet slipping beneath the horizon, leaving behind a half-lit gloom and filling the forest with shadows. But there were flashes of brightness between the trees—bursts of brilliance illuminating the dark.

               “Lightning beetles!” Ben shouted, excitedly. He threw the door open and raced outside, so excited her forgot to shut it in his wake.

               “Ben!” Leia called, running to the doorway. “Don’t go too far!” But Ben was running in circles, laughing with a carefree abandon she hadn’t heard from him in a long time.

               She couldn’t help but smile.

               Her smile faded as Vader came to stand behind her—he would never be able to fully mask his heavy footfalls. For a long moment neither of them said anything, choosing instead to watch Ben as he caught the luminescent creatures in his cupped hands, letting their brilliance slip through his fingers, before letting them go and starting again.

               “I thought you were going to give him some discipline,” Leia said, with a dark humor. “Not let him twist you around his finger.”

               Vader didn’t answer. She turned, and he came to stand beside her, looking out into the darkness with an unreadable expression on his face.

               “Discipline is for soldiers,” he said, after a long moment, “not children.”

               Leia stared at Vader as if she’d never seen him before. She felt his pensive mood disappear.

               “You did not bring him to me to break him,” Vader hissed, but Leia held up a hand.

               “I certainly didn’t,” she said, firmly, “but you have to admit, that’s quite a change of outlook for you.”

               Vader glared at her—but then his expression softened into something morose, and he turned back to watch Ben, folding his arms across his chest.

               “I had a life before the Empire,” he said, distantly. “There were children in it.”

               Leia didn’t answer. She wasn’t entirely sure how she could.

               “I wanted to be a father,” Vader went on, softly. He turned, looking at her for a long moment. “I wanted to be _your_ father.”

               Leia’s mouth went dry. “You weren’t,” she said, finally. “You _aren’t_.”

               “I am aware of your feelings on the matter.” Vader was stony-faced. “In truth, Obi-Wan took you from me—“

               “Not this again—“

               “--because I was _unfit_.” There was something in Vader’s voice that Leia had never heard before—an ancient, grating feeling of self-contempt. He turned and looked back out into the darkness, staring into the clearing without seeing it.

               “I have had many years,” he ground out, “to meditate on my _failings_.” 

               _You’ll need longer than that to cover all of them_ , Leia thought, but she kept the barbed words to herself.

               “Why tell me this?” she asked, after a long silence.

               Vader didn’t answer immediately—he reached out a hand, slowly, for Leia’s face, his fingertips just barely brushing a stray lock of hair before she instinctively jerked away. He withdrew his hand.

               “I promised to do what I could for your son,” he said, finally. “I want to do what is right for him.” He looked directly at her, and she found herself unable to meet his eyes. “I want to do what is right for you.”

               Leia’s restraint cracked: “I won’t hold my breath,” she replied, without thinking.

               The look on Vader’s face told her that her jab had found its mark—but for the first time, she took no pleasure drawing blood. Vader’s jaw worked for a long moment, and he opened his mouth as if to say something—then, abruptly, he turned on his heel, marching off into the darkened forest.

               “Grandfather?”  Ben asked, skidding to a halt. He began to chase after Vader, but came to a halt at the edge of the trees.

               “Mama? Where’s he going?”

               Leia came up behind Ben, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Your grandfather just needs some time to himself,” she said. “He’s not used to having company”. That much, at least, was true.

               “Will he come back?”

               “He’ll be up bright and early tomorrow morning,” Leia assured him. “Which is why _you_ should be going to bed.”

               “No!”

               “Yes,” she said, firmly. “Then you’ll have all day to pester Grandfather.”

               Ben huffed, but it seemed like—for once—she would be spared a screaming fit. He reached out, cupping his hand gently around one of the lightning beetles and pulling it close to his chest.

               “Can I take some inside?” he asked, hopefully. “I can put them in a jar by my bed…”

               Leia reached down, gently pulling one of his hands free. She reached out in the Force—just a barest thread, about as much as Luke had manage to teach her—and the tiny creature came to rest in the palm of Ben’s hand, blinking off and on. Ben crowed with excitement, and the beetle flew away again, higher and higher until it disappeared into the trees.

               “The beetles belong outside,” she said, softly. “It won’t make light in a cage.” She gave Ben a quick kiss on the top of his head. “Come on—bedtime.”

               Sleep proved elusive for Leia that night. She lay awake, listening to Ben’s soft, steady breathing, unable to find rest until she finally heard the door to the cabin creak open and shut once again.

* * *

 

               Dawn came miserably early on Vader’s world. Leia rose dutifully with the sun, easing herself out of bed without jostling her sleeping son. She padded silently into the Iiving quarters—really just a galley poached almost wholesale from some scrapped freighter and a few rough-hewn chairs around an equally rustic table—and began heating water for her caf. She saw no evidence Vader had taken a morning meal before setting out. Casting a critical eye over his one cabinet, she saw little evidence that he ate at this this table at all.

                 _Luke won’t like that._

               She had just enough time to finish her caf in peace before Ben appeared, bleary-eyed and yawning. “Where’s grandfather?”

               “Good morning to you too,” she said, equal parts amused and annoyed. “Did you sleep well?”

               Ben looked at her, soberly. “I want to go exploring.”

               “Eat breakfast first,” she said, firmly, pushing a ration bar his way. Ben wrinkled his nose.

               “Don’t want to.”

               Leia set her cup down and folded her arms. Ben glared at her for a long moment—then acquiesced, tearing off a chunk of the bar with his teeth and chewing spitefully.

               “There,” he said, throwing the half-eaten ration bar on the table. “Done.”

               He certainly wasn’t done, but that didn’t stop him from running out the door. Still, was more than Leia usually got out of him, so she let it slide.

               For now, at least.

                She gently shut the door to Vader’s cabin, searching for a lock but unable to find even a primitive deadbolt. It made sense, she supposed—even if there were someone else on this backwater planet, they’d have to be an idiot to trespass in Darth Vader’s home—but it was strange all the same.

                “Ben!” she called. “Don’t go so far without me!” Ben half-heeded her words, darting in and out of the brush, a flash of pale skin and black hair among the trees. Leia was tempted ask where he was going, but she knew—she could sense Vader’s brooding presence at the end of the faint trail just as surely as Ben could.

               Still, it was a beautiful morning. The air was clear, and the pervasive quiet of the forest was a welcome break from the perpetual droning hum of the spaceports that made up most of Leia’s life these days. The sun sent golden spears through the spreading green foliage, the half-shadows dappling the path before them—Leia wondered how many times Vader had taken this route, steady and sure, before his boots had worn down the earth beneath him. Mist pervaded the forest, not yet melted away by the strengthening morning light, blurring the edges of her perception. The shadows, the leaves, and the mist all combined to hide all but the faintest glimpse of Ben from her, revealing only a ghostly flash of his face before he disappeared back into the brush. She felt uncomfortably as if she were chasing a mirage.

               Leia tried to dismiss the ideas as fanciful nonsense, but she felt a stirring of foreboding all the same.

               She heard the stream before she saw it, a rush of water and the crash of falls just beyond the treeline. The trees thinned and gave way to a rocky riverbank, with large boulders jutting out of the pebbled shore. It was here that Leia found Vader, standing in water up to his waist, staring at the surface intently. He did not look up at her, or acknowledge her presence in any way.

               Ben happily scrambled down to the bank, jumping from rock to rock with a sure-footedness Leia hadn’t known he possessed. Her heart leapt into her mouth as he hit a wet patch and slid, but before she could cry out he regained his balance, making the final leap to a flat, lichen-painted rock a half foot from where Vader was standing. He approached his grandfather slowly, peering over his shoulder with interest. For a long moment, neither of them moved.

               Vader broke the stillness with a furious burst of motion, striking the water with his hand—no, striking something beneath the water, tightening his grip and heaving a gasping, wriggling fish out of the water in a spray of foam. The fish struggled against his grasp, its mouth wide-open as if shocked at the indignity of its situation, as Vader studied it for a long moment. Apparently finding the fish satisfactory, he dumped it without ceremony into a bucket on the rock behind him. Ben ran over to peer into the bucket, his face contorting with disgusted delight.

               “Ugh!” he said. “They’re slimy!”

               Vader said nothing. He took the bucket in one hand, drew Ben closer and lifted the boy up onto his shoulder in one smooth, easy motion. Ben shrieked with surprise and delight, drumming his feet against Vader’s chest, and thus the former Dark Lord forded the river, arriving back at the shore with his robes sodden and dripping but his cargo safe and dry.

               “Let me down!” Ben demanded. Vader knelt, and Ben slid off his shoulders, barely waiting to touch the ground before running to the water’s edge, splashing around and looking for more fish.  Vader watched him for a moment, with an unreadable expression.

               “Good morning,” Leia said, pointedly. She could put up with childish behavior from her son, but she absolutely wasn’t in the mood to tolerate it from her father.

               Vader held out his bucket out to her in lieu of a response. Leia could see it bore an Alliance crest—it was likely it had once held engine parts in the Hosnian III ship yards before Vader had scavenged it. Against her better judgement Leia peered over the edge, counting four silvery fish swimming forlornly in the murky water.

               “Are these acceptable?” Vader asked.

               Leia wrinkled her nose. “For what?”

               “For you,” he said, impatiently. “Breakfast.”

               It seemed as though this was all Leia was going to get in terms of an apology for his behavior last night. “You cook now?” she asked, skeptically.

               “No.” He didn’t even blink. Leia took a breath, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

               “Fine. Breakfast it is.”

               There were a few appliances in Vader’s rough-hewn shack, but this morning he didn’t bother with them. Instead, he knelt before a well-established stone circle a few meters into the clearing, and Ben watched with huge eyes as a tiny spark from Vader’s firestrike grew into a cheerily blazing campfire. Ben reached for the flames, and before Leia could even open her mouth Vader’s hand shot out—coming to rest against Ben’s chest, the sharpness of his movement belied by how gently Vader pushed him back.

               “Keep your distance,” he rumbled.

               Ben squirmed, then turned to face Vader. Something seemed to occur to him and he cocked his head, then reached out and gingerly touched Vader’s face, his fingers brushing along the pronounced ridge of scar tissue beneath his grandfather’s eye.

               “It won’t burn _me_ ,” Ben said, confidently.

               Vader looked down at Ben, cautiously, and Leia held her breath—a wrong move would cause Ben to seal himself back behind his walls, just like he did any time an adult couldn’t understand his bizarre pronouncements—

               “You are flesh,” Vader finally settled on, with a note of caution.

               “I am more,” Ben whispered, excitedly. Leia felt a wave of cold wash over her, something more than fear—something she sensed—

               Vader reached out, almost questioning, and brushed his knuckles against Ben’s cheek. He looked at Ben, as if gently questioning: _then what is this?_

“Uncle Luke says we are more than what we seem,” Ben said—just a hair too quickly.

               “It is true,” Vader rumbled. He was watching Ben with a careful look. “But the flesh that houses you is dear to me. Take care.”

               Ben nodded, seemingly pleased with Vader’s response— but a dark cloud crept over his face and his eyes slid back to the fire, watching it intently. Vader put his hand on Ben’s head, then shared a glance with Leia. He didn’t need to reach out in the Force for her to catch his drift.

               _We need to talk._

               She nodded, and told Ben to go play while she readied their meal.

               The dish was familiar to Leia—the Alliance had taken shelter on uninhabited worlds like this more often than not, and supplies were always dear, so it wasn’t unusual for rebel soldiers to supplement their rations with whatever they could find. She slid the bladed end of her multitool into the fish, and crimson viscera splattered on the forest floor. Vader glanced at her blood-slicked hands and flinched.

               “Hypocrite,” she said, plunging her blade into the next fish without missing a beat.

               Vader’s expression hardened, but he didn’t rise to her bait. He watched her methodically wrap the fish in broad green leaves and spear them—perhaps with more force than was necessary—on long, tapered sticks. The flesh crackled as Leia held them over the flames, and she felt a wave of nausea—but it wasn’t hers.

               “You haven’t told me everything,” Vader said, his voice pitched low. She felt his shields slide firmly into place, and her nausea vanished.

               “You know what you need to know,” she muttered, pitching her voice low so Ben wouldn’t hear.

               Vader was unmoved.

               “I cannot aid you unless I know what exactly requires my attention. From what I have observed, there’s nothing wrong with the boy at all—“ Vader stopped short, watching her warily. Leia shut her eyes for a moment, breathing through a wave of suffocating emotion.

               “My sweet boy,” she said, softly. She watched the leaping flames for a moment, her eyes fixed on the bloody, gaping mouth of one of the fish. “When he was born, I couldn’t believe how perfect he was.” The fire popped, but she didn’t flinch.

               “No one else sees that. They look at him and they see _you_.”  Leia flung the last word like an javelin. “They whisper. They never know my son. Only your legacy.”

               Vader watched her for a long moment, then shifted and began to rise to his feet. “Then you have come here in vain,” he said, harshly. “You ask of me the one thing I cannot change—“

               “Wait.”

               Vader paused, and Leia glanced over to make sure Ben was still safely out of earshot before continuing.

               “Ben is…” she bit her lip, trying to choose her words carefully.  “Ben is strange.”

               Vader look clearly impatient, but she pressed on, the words tumbling out of her.

               “It’s not—all children are a little strange, I think. But Ben is something else—he’s my son,” she added, fiercely, “he is my son, but…the other children notice. They see something behind his eyes. It makes them afraid.”

               Vader snorted. “They know their betters.”

               “Would you _listen_ to me?” Leia hissed. “It’s not _that_. He knows things—things he shouldn’t— not normal things, like Luke does. It’s—the kind of things a child shouldn’t know. I don’t—I don’t know how, but he does. He says…” she trailed off, swallowing hard. “It’s awful to hear.”

               Vader sat back on his heels, studying Leia’s face, as if he’d be able to read in her face the words she had left unsaid.

               “There is something else,” he said, quietly. Leia squeezed her eyes shut.

               “He’s so angry,” she whispered. “I don’t—I don’t know _why_ ,” her voice broke, she breathed again. She stared intently at the ground, trying to ignore Vader—who was watching her with an expression dangerously close to pity.

               _He has no right_ , she thought, furiously, but breathed through that wave of fury as well.

               “He’s angry and it scares me,” she admitted, quietly. She looked up, to where Ben was intently trying to scale a tree with large, spreading branches—for all the world the picture of normal, happy childhood. “He—can be nothing at all, he can be fine or sulky and then suddenly—“ Leia couldn’t find the words to describe what happened next—the flurry of tiny fists beating against her, the inarticulate screaming, the terrifying power of Ben lashing out in the Force—

               She pushed up her sleeve before she could stop herself, forcing herself to look away, jaw clenched. She felt the ghost of Vader’s touch—the air stirred by his fingers that didn’t quite touch her skin, didn’t dare, as they passed over the white crescent scar, very clearly made of small, even tooth marks.

               “It’s not his fault,” Leia said, softly. “I thought—I did everything I could. I thought I could save him from—“ her voice was tight. “But I failed him.”

                She felt Vader’s touch, so feather-light she could have imagined it, brushing against her mind for a fleeting second—too briefly for her to push him away. They sat for a moment, Leia unable to meet his eyes, listening to Ben hum a tuneless song from his treetop perch.

               A glob of fat rolled off of Leia’s fish and fell in the fire, hissing and spitting.

               “You haven’t failed him yet,” Vader said, drawing himself to his full height. “Eat.”

               Leia could have laughed. _Eat_. It was too surreal, the monster who had chased her across the galaxy chiding her about _breakfast_ , of all things.

               “Eat,” he said, again, firmly, “and when you are finished, I want to show you something.”

               Ben was wandering back, attracted by the smell of cooking fish. He stopped short, glancing between Leia and Vader, his face twisting with an ugly expression.

               “Are you keeping secrets?” he asked, suspiciously.

               “No, sweetheart—“ Leia started, both nervous and deeply ashamed of it. “We were just—“

               “You’re talking about me,” Ben interrupted.

               “You will forgive me,” Vader said, glancing briefly at Leia. “I have many questions about my only grandson.”

               Ben considered this for a moment, then his face relaxed. “Alright,” he said, agreeably, and Leia let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. He reached for one of the fish, and Leia gently pushed his hand away.

               “They’re hot,” she chided. “Say ‘please’.”

               “Please!”

               Ben tore into the fish with delight—Leia couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten something she’d given him without fuss. She saw a flash of white teeth in blackened flesh, juices running down his cheeks and chin and paused—but Ben sensed her pensive mood and smiled at her.

               “It’s good!”

               It was the kind of moment she hadn’t shared with Ben in what seemed like years. Leia glanced at Vader and wondered how long it would last.


	2. Chapter Two

               After they finished their meal Vader stood abruptly, disappearing into his cabin. He remerged with an Alliance branded water bladder and tossed it to Leia, not stopping to see if she caught it—perhaps already knowing that he would. Without turning to look at her, or uttering a word, he continued into the woods, taking a different path than the one that had led them to the river.

               Ben scrambled to his feet, wordlessly, and bounded after Vader, once again pestering with questions about his life of solitude.

               Leia fell back, watching her son talk eagerly to the man she’d hated so long—the man whose long shadow had cast so much darkness on their lives.

               _This is the only way,_ she reminded herself. _I am protecting him._

               Still, she had her doubts.

               “You never told me why everyone pretends you’re dead,” Ben said, trotting along. Vader glanced down at him, weighing his words.

               “Not all are pretending. Some genuinely believe I am dead.”       

               “Why do you let them think that?”

               “It gives them great comfort,” Vader grated, not breaking a stride. “Some even find comfort in the lie, despite knowing it is false.”    

               Ben scowled. “Like mom.”

               Vader flicked his eyes back towards Leia, but said nothing.

               “Mom is a liar,” Ben’s tone was as level and serious as any adult’s. Leia felt something crumple inside her, and Vader came to a sudden halt, so fast Ben skidded. Vader knelt down, looking him seriously in the eyes.

               “Is that true?”

               “Yes!” Ben answered, petulantly, and Leia clenched her fists. This wasn’t working—

               “Is it?” Vader pressed, serious but not severe. Ben glared up at him, then finally dropped his eyes, defeated.

               “No,” he said, sullenly. “It’s not.”

               “Is it deserved?”

               Ben scuffed the ground with his foot. “No,” he said, softer, less resentful.

               “Words that are not deserved are not worth saying,” Vader said, “and things that are not true are not worth believing.”  Ben said nothing, still looking at the ground. “Do you think this is fair?”

               Ben nodded.

               “Then it will be a rule,” Vader said, standing. Ben looked up at him.

               “A rule isn’t fair unless it is for everyone,” he said. Vader cocked his head.

               “Agreed,” he said. “Your mother and I will also abide by the new rule.”

               “OK,” Ben said, agreeably. Vader gave him a pat on the shoulder, which Ben took as his cue to set off down the trail again, leaves crunching under his feet. Vader paused, looking back at Leia.

               “What?” she asked, irritably.

               “Nothing,” he said, and then set off once again, Leia feeling even more uneasy than before. Was Vader helping, like he had promised? Or was he working subtly to poison her son against her, to use Ben’s problems to his full advantage—

               _Don’t be paranoid_ , she thought to herself, _just because you can’t accept that even Darth Vader is doing a better job with Ben than you_ —

               Leia wasn’t one to mope or linger on her many shortcomings, and she brushed that thought aside—but the poison from its touch still lingered.

               She was saved from her own self-castigation by Ben, who stopped, turning and staring into the woods to their right before taking off at a dead run, disappearing into the trees.

               “Ben!” She shouted, “stop—“ Vader was already after him, and Leia easily followed his crashing footfalls and the broken foliage he left in his wake. Her heart hammered in her chest as she ran, blood pumping in her ears as she thought of all the horrible things that could happen to Ben, alone in the wilderness of a strange, hostile planet—

               She cleared a stand of thin silvery trees just in time to slide to a halt—there was Vader, stopped at the edge of a large clearing, and there was Ben, directly in the middle, reverently laying his hand on a fallen tree trunk.

               “Come away from there,” Vader said, his voice strained. “This is no place for children.”

               Ben looked up at him, quizzically. “Why?”

               Leia looked up Vader, tempted to ask the same question. She was still untrained in the Force, but her instinct for danger had always been keen—she just wasn’t getting any kind of bad feeling from the weird clearing. She took a few steps, looking around, but still didn’t feel anything threatening. She turned, but Vader stayed firmly at the edge of the clearing, his fists clenched at his sides, his expression dark.

               “Something happened here,” Ben said, “I can feel it.” He knelt, dragging his fingers through the damp, crumbling soil—

               Next to deep gouges in the dark earth—

                Leia froze, opening her senses to whatever had drawn Ben here. She saw now the fallen trees had been brutally torn from the ground, roots and all, with the shape of grasping hands imprinted on their broken trunks. She heard—no, she felt the place echo with an angry cry, felt the rage, the despair imparted on them—

               “It was you,” she said, turning to Vader. “You’re what happened to this place.”

               Vader’s expression went blank. “You perceive much,” he said, flatly. “Your power continues to grow.”

               Leia ignored his praise. “ _Why_?”

               Vader didn’t answer. Leia turned, absently noting how much power it much have taken to uproot such old trees and throw them around like the winds of a terrible storm. Luke said the Dark Side drew its strength from negative emotions, and she could sense them—fury, like an animal’s, feral or even rabid—

               Pain—

               Despair—

               Moss had ground over the felled trees, smoothed out tears in the earth, but the feelings still lingered. Leia couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that those lingering traces of anguish had come from _Vader_.  

               “What happened—?”

               “It is not healthy for Ben to be exposed to this,” Vader snapped—and for once, Leia agreed. She turned, deeply chagrinned, picking her way carefully to the center of the destruction.

               “Come on Ben,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “We need to keep going.”

               “I want to stay,” Ben said, not whining—Ben never whined like a normal child—but flatly, reasoning his argument like an adult. “This place is _interesting_.”

               “Wouldn’t you like to see the interesting place your grandfather wants to show us instead?” she asked, masking the cold fear that came on her at the idea of Ben finding a place of suffering interesting—and the ever-present fear that she would set off another of his rages…

               He considered her words for a long, tense moment. “I do,” he finally answered, standing and rambling his way back to the edge of the clearing, where Vader stood. Leia released the tension she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

                “How much further?” Ben asked, looking at Vader.

               “Not far,” he replied, resting his hand on Ben’s back and gently pushing him the rest of the way out of the clearing. “Come. We will want to be there and back before dark.”

* * *

 

               Vader’s path led them to another clearing in the trees, this one smaller –- and naturally-occurring. He stretched out his hand, and a large boulder levitated slightly, stone grinding against stone, before rolling to the side and revealing the mouth of a cave. The entrance was tall enough for Leia to pass through fairly easily, but Vader would have to stoop at least part of the way.

               “This is your hideout?” She asked.

               Vader ignored her. He walked down to the sloping earth towards the entrance, and Ben ran excitedly behind him. He paused at the entrance.

               “Will you join us?”

               “What—don’t you have a lantern, or something?”

               “You will not need one,” Vader said, briskly. “Come with us or stay behind, it is your choice.” He lowered his head and disappeared down the mouth, Ben hot on his heels.

               “Wait—!” Leia reached the threshold of the cave and paused. The light from the outside penetrated a few meters, but quickly diminished—she saw a flash of Ben’s light tunic before he passed too far for her to see. She squinted, but could see no shapes moving in the darkness.

               Leia paused. More than anything, this seemed like a trap—to get her lost in the pitch-black caves, never to return—

               She felt a flicker of annoyance in the Force. “It is unwise to fall behind”, she heard, echoing somewhere deeper within the cave.

               “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she muttered, and plunged into the dark.

               She was forced to take slow, halting steps, and even then she stumbled. She reached out in front of her, groping blindly, until she found the wall and used it to steady herself. Even then, she found herself falling behind.

_Close your eyes. You will not be able to see anything. Your lack of sight clouds your vision._

               Leia pushed back with her shields, angry at the intrusion into her mental space, and more than a little frustrated with Vader’s cryptic instructions. Feeling ridiculous, she did as he advised.

 _Pitch black to pitch black. Great._ She thought as loudly as she could, hoping he could hear her. She took a deep breath, attempting to steady herself, and hesitantly reached out with her senses like Luke had taught her.

               The cave didn’t become magically revealed to her—but the longer she waited, the more she noticed things—the sound of Vader’s heavy footfalls, the drip of water warning her of hanging stalactites, the general sense of where Ben had gone—

               She was overcome with the strange feeling that she always knew where Ben was—not always literally, not always consciously, but she _knew_ —

               There. With a sudden certainty she couldn’t explain, Leia knew the safest way to navigate the cave—the route that Vader and Ben had already discovered. She took off at a brisk walk, marveling at how easily she dodged obstacles couldn’t entirely perceive.

               She was nearly caught up with Vader, half-trotting to match his long, even strides, when she sensed something else—something deep within the cave itself, a presence—not a living thing, necessarily, but something that resounded in the Force.

               _Good_ , Vader thought. _Perceptive_. Leia scowled and brushed him aside, just as she turned the corner in the final chamber.

               “What is that?” she asked. She opened her eyes, but still couldn’t see anything—only the sound of Ben’s scuffling footsteps let her know she wasn’t alone.

               “What do you sense?” Vader asked.

               “The Force is strong here,” Ben answered, automatically. “It’s—its resonating in the walls.”

               “The walls?” Vader asked, in a leading manner.

               Ben was silent for a moment. “No—there’s something—“

               There was a pulse of blue light, just enough to illuminate Ben’s startled face for the briefest moment before it was extinguished once again.

               “Go on,” Vader said, and she felt him move to stand behind Ben, placing a hand on his shoulder—though how she knew, she wasn’t sure. “Again. Sustain it.”

               Leia felt the Force curl around Ben, gathering in strength around his little form, and _pulse_ —

               Leia let out an involuntary gasp as the cave was suddenly illuminated, revealing walls embedded with hundreds of tiny blue crystals. They glowed as if lit from within, their soft blue light casting midnight shadows on Vader’s face.

               “Kyber,” Leia breathed—and a lot of it.

 Vader stretched out his hand, and the Force pulsed again, and the light expanded—racing down the hallways they had walked through in darkness. The crystals stretched as far as she could see the way they had come, lining the walls in delicate patterns—swirling cosmos and bursting stars. She knew from Luke kyber crystals could power Jedi lightsabers, and was familiar with their use in the Death Star, but this seemed so far from the crude violence she knew. The Force rippled, and she felt it—moving, swirling around her like invisible eddies, clearer than she ever had before.

               “Kyber crystals are able to capture the energy of the Force,” Vader said, softly. “they serve channels for its power.”

               “That’s why this place is so—alive,” Ben said, staring up at the crystal-lined ceiling in wonder.

               “Indeed.” Vader stepped back, settling into the center of the cave and kneeling in a meditative pose. He waited, patiently, until Ben was finished looking at the crystals and turned to join him.   

               Leia hung back, content to watch—on high alert for anything she thought Luke would disapprove of.

               “When you meditate,” Vader began, “you must clear your mind of all errant thoughts. You become like the kyber—a channel through which the Force flows.”

               Ben closed his eyes and sat, silently, hands pressing down on his knees perhaps a little harder than necessary.

               “It’s difficult!” Ben burst out, frustrated. The light from the crystals flickered, dimming for one heart-stopping second. Leia tensed, but Vader nodded.

               “It is,” he agreed, and Ben cracked and eye open, watching him carefully. Vader placed a hand against the ground, and for a long moment, nothing happened. Then he drew it upwards, slowly, and a crystal slowly emerged from the ground, seemingly of its own volition. It floated upwards, resting mid-air above Vader’s palm. Ben reached out with both hands, and at Vader’s nod of approval, took the kyber from him—never actually touching it, only keeping it contained between his outstretched hands.

               “What am I meant to do with it?” Ben asked. Vader tilted his head.

               “Meditation is not a chore or a task. It is a state of being.”

               Ben frowned, looking up at Vader over the crystal—but that caused it to drop precipitously, and Ben was forced to return his focus to keeping it in place.

               “But—“ he started, then stopped. “Oh.”

               “Yes.”

               They spent the following hour in silence—Leia wasn’t sure how exactly how long they sat there. Time seemed to flow differently in Vader’s cavern. She sat with her feet beneath her, hands on her thighs, appreciating the quiet of the cave and marveling at its beauty. Vader pulled additional crystals from within the earth, showing Ben how to make them rotate slowly, first in circles, then in more intricate patterns.

               “For a Jedi to meditate,” Vader spoke, his voice pitched low and soft, “they must be at peace with themselves—able to clear their mind of all thoughts. There are some Jedi who find this very easy, because they are at all times in serene connection to the Force.” The blue light of the cavern highlighted the dark circles under his eyes, and cast eerie shadows on the scar tissue of his scalp. “There are other Jedi with unsettled thoughts, not so easily cleared, who must first occupy their hands before their minds can be still.” He looked down at Ben for a long moment, as if choosing his words carefully.

               “What thoughts do you have that unsettle you so?”

               Ben’s eyes flew open, and he looked up at Vader with veiled suspicion.

               “None,” he said, too casually to be believable. “Nothing bothers me.”

               “There is no shame in it,” Vader replied. “We live in a deeply broken Galaxy. There is much that is worthy of your concern.”

               Ben’s eyes glittered, and he leaned forward—then, as he was opening his mouth to speak, seemed to catch himself and withdraw.

               “Uncle Luke says the Force is balanced,” Ben replied. “But you don’t think so.”

               Vader looked down at Ben. “I don’t think the Balance of the Force is something that should trouble a child.”

               “I’m not just a child,” Ben sulked. The lines and creases in Vader’s face seemed to deepen.

               “One day, you will bear the weight of the Galaxy on your shoulders,” he said, “and for this I am sorry.” Ben looked up at him, questioningly, and Vader continued: “Then, you will be grateful you were once merely a child.”

               “I’m not the same as other children,” Ben said, seriously. Vader nodded.

               “Of course not. You are powerful in the Force.”

               “I’m not even the same as the other initiates at the Praxeum,” Ben said, with an expression Leia couldn’t quite place—guarded, but—zealously pleased.

               “Was there ever any doubt of this?”

               _Stop that_ , she thought, irritated, _he already has enough trouble making friends without you giving him a fat head_ — but she thought she caught the question behind Vader’s question, and allowed him to continue.

               Ben’s face twisted.

               “People don’t like me,” he said, “because I understand and they don’t.”

               “Understand what?”

               “The Force. The Galaxy,” Ben shot a furtive glance at Leia. “Things.”

               “Is that why you don’t shield your thoughts from them? Or your presence?”

               “No,” Ben said, just a little too quickly. Vader leaned forward, expectantly, and Ben was suddenly absorbed with tracing patterns in the loose sand on the floor of the cave.

               “It weakens my connection to the Force,” he muttered, looking at the ground.

               “Your connection to the Force comes from within,” Vader said, sharply. “Not from without. Who told you this?”

               “No one!” Ben took a moment, reeling himself in. “No one,” he repeated, more calmly. “It’s just—how I feel.”

               Vader studied Ben for a long time, as if hoping if he waited long enough, he would hear the truth. Ben met his eyes, his expression carefully neutral.

               “If you believe something is hindering your connection to the Force,” Vader began, slowly. “We can begin to work on a few exercises—“

               “Maybe that can be tomorrow’s lesson,” Leia cut in. Vader turned—almost as if he had forgotten she was there.

               “You covered a lot of ground today. I’m sure Ben’s tired—“

               “I’m not!”

               “Well, I am” Leia said, breezily. She stood, slowly, and stretched, rubbing her knees where the hard floor of the cave had dug into her skin. “You said we should be getting back before dark, in any case.”

               Vader watched her for a moment. “Indeed,” he said, bracing a hand to the floor and slowly coming to his feet. He bent over, collecting the crystals he and Ben had used that day.

               “What should be done with those?” Ben asked, suddenly curious.

               “We find a place for them,” Vader replied.

               “Back where you found them?” Leia asked, confused. Vader shook his head.

               “They have been touched with Force-energies. They will not fit into the same places,” he said. He held out one of the crystals to Ben, wrapping his large, skeletal prosthetics around Ben’s small, soft hands.

               “Where should this go?” Vader asked. Ben considered the crystal for a moment, pursing his lips. Then he walked past Vader, down the winding caverns they had come from—following some intuition Leia couldn’t quite parse. He turned down another branching corridor—where the line of gently-glowing crystals abruptly stopped. He held the pointed end of his crystal to the wall, without applying any physical force to it, and it slid easily into the rock—completing the pattern.

               Ben turned and looked over his shoulder. “There?”

               “Did you sense that it where it belonged?”

               Ben hesitated. “Yes?”

               Vader nodded in approval. “Then that is correct.” He offered Ben the remaining crystals, and with intense concentration Ben found the empty spaces within the existing pattern, creating a more intricate design.

               “Your instincts are strong,” Vader told him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Trust them—and trust the people around you.” Vader looked down at him, fixing him with a searching look.

               “If something troubles you, you can always ask for guidance.”    

               Ben nodded, sagely. “I know,” he said. Vader stayed where he was, watching Ben with a lingering, meaningful look, but finally gave up trying to wait the boy out and turned.

               Ben looked behind them, at the empty, dark caverns where the kyber-patterns hadn’t reached. “It must have taken hundreds of people to place all these crystals,” Ben said, thoughtfully. Vader didn’t answer. He placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder, pointing him back to the mouth of the cave.

               “Your mother will want us home before dark,” he said. “Lead the way.”

                Ben set off down the corridor, but Leia paused, walking to the edge of the crystals and tracing the pattern with her finger. She felt the energy from the kyber Ben placed—she tapped each crystal, feeling his presence, ghosts of his concentration, the lingering emotions she couldn’t quite pick out. The others—

               “No one’s been on this planet for hundreds of years,” she said aloud. “No one’s ever stayed long enough to even make a settlement.” She turned, staring at Vader. “You did all of this,” she said, half-marveling, half-accusing. “Every single one. It was _you_.”

               Vader looked down at her, and said nothing. His lack of denial was as good as a confirmation.

               “Why?” Leia asked.

               Vader’s mouth twisted in a sullen expression. “It is Luke’s wish that I live as a Jedi,” he said, dourly. “A Jedi meditates.”

               Leia waved her hand. “Luke doesn’t do all of this,” she said. “He just sits.”

               “We are not all as proficient at self-mastery as my son,” Vader said, with acid in his voice. “I will accompany Ben. You may stay here, if you wish, but I do not recommend it.”  He turned sharply on his heel and left.

Leia remembered Vader’s talk about distracting from troubled thoughts with busy hands, how quickly he’d identified Ben, and suddenly the intricate spirals and shapes lining the walls seemed more austere than beautiful. It struck her as a very lonely way to pass the time, surrounded by a blue light that gave no warmth, and she wasn’t sure what to make of that thought.

The crystals dimmed as the three of them left, with Leia slowly bringing up the rear, lost in her thoughts—once again plunging the treasure of this forgotten planet into darkness.

They reached the mouth of the cave, and Leia saw that time had indeed passed them by—the air was cooler, and the light was fiery orange-gold, bathing the leaves of the trees in sunset. Ben had already set off the trail, but Leia reached out a hand and grabbed Vader by the tunic, bring him to a halt. He turned, startled at the contact.

“I have questions,” she said.

Vader inclined his head, silently consenting.

               “Was everything you taught Ben today…appropriate?” She asked, cautiously. “Would Luke approve?”

               Vader stiffened, but his answer was level: “It was unorthodox, but not heretical.” He watched her, considering, as if weighing whether or not he would offer his next piece of information: “I had a student. A padawan. It was a long time ago.”

               “Oh.” Leia wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. She supposed it made her less—uneasy about Ben taking lessons from Vader. “Then did you—“ she chose her words very, very carefully—“notice anything? About Ben?”

               Vader glanced down the trail, where Ben was crouching over a wriggling, many-legged insect. “I have—suspicions,” he said.

               “What?”

               He shook his head. “It is too early to say. I will have to meditate further, and see what the Force reveals to me.”

               “You sat down with him. What does that reveal to you?”

               Vader blinked. “Surely you know better than most that it is no privilege to be a child with a destiny.”

               He had her there—she knew that all too well. “But there’s more?”

               “Have patience,” Vader replied, with an air that made Leia grind her teeth. She took a breath, steadying herself.

               “Fine,” she said. “One more question.”

               Vader gestured, expectantly.

               “If you can make the crystals glow, why did you make us walk all the way back there in the dark?”

               Vader peered down at her, as if surprised she didn’t already know:

               “The quest for knowledge is a walk through darkness in search of illumination,” he rumbled. “One does not come before the other.”

               Leia’s mouth dropped open in disbelief, but before she could reply Vader had turned, making his way to Ben’s side.


	3. Chapter 3

_Leia looked up from her datapad—“Come in,” she said, with a slight smile. Luke was as respectful of her makeshift ‘office’ as he was of her actual quarters on the Home One. He hovered at the edge of the forest clearing where she’d been hammering out memos and working on her allotted portion of Founding Articles._

_“Making any progress?” Luke asked. Leia sighed._

_“I’m starting to suspect the war will prove to be the easy part of all this,” she replied, taking a moment to raise her arms up and stretch. “This is my third re-write today.”_

_“It will be done,” Luke said, with conviction. “You’ve always picked what was right over what was easy.” Leia put her stylus down, looking up at him warily._

_“You came her to ask me something,” she said. He didn’t ask how she knew. He knelt down on the forest floor, facing her, and seemed to choose his words carefully._

_“Father is doing much better,” he said, delicately._

_“_ Your _father. Congratulations,” Leia replied, stone-faced. Luke sighed._

_“You have to—“ Luke started, but Leia held up a hand to stop him._

_“Tell me something new or leave. I don’t have time to do this right now.”_

_“Very well,” Luke agreed. “Anakin is recovering well. They doctors say it will be a months before he’s back to where he was, and who knows how long before he’s actually healthy…” Luke trailed off, and Leia felt sorry for snapping at him—until she remembered who exactly this grief was being wasted on._

_“I don’t see how this concerns me,” she said. “I don’t want anything to do with him. He’ll stand trial and the people will decide his fate.”_

_“It may not come to that,” Luke said, “there’s a deal on the table—“_

_“A deal—?”_

_“I didn’t come here to talk politics,” Luke said, wearily. “I’m not going to interfere in your arena.” Leia tilted her head back, waiting. Luke looked at her with eyes as clear and full of hope as they’d been the first day he’d left Tatooine, choosing his words carefully:_

_“When Father is well enough, he’s going to help me find a suitable place for a new Jedi Temple,” Luke said, carefully. “He’s agreed to be—well, not my student, exactly, but I’m going to help him find his way back, and he’ll teach me about the old Order—“_

_“That’s nice,” Leia said, deeply skeptical. “What does it have to do with me?”_

_Luke took a deep breath. “I want you to come with us.” Leia stared._

_“No.”_

_“No?” Luke asked, confused and hurt. “Leia, you have the Force—“_

_“I didn’t ask for it,” she said. “I certainly didn’t ask for any—_ connection _to him—“_

_“Please, hear me out—“_

_“My answer is the same now as its been,” she said, stubbornly. “Luke, I don’t have time to explore the mysteries of the universe with you. I have a government to put together. How can you even talk about leaving, when there’s still Imp holdouts left to mop up? We’ve got loyalists planning a counter-coup, collaborationist governments making noises about ‘independence’—to say nothing of the years it will take to actually_ build _something from all this rubble—“_

_“Leia—“_

_“Don’t,” she snapped. “I can’t go with you, and I_ won’t _go with him.” There was a long moment of silence between them. Luke closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his thoughts._

_“Things won’t go back to the way they were,” Luke said, finally. “You can’t pretend like you don’t know—about Father, about your powers. It’s dangerous for you to be aware and not be trained—“_

_“Oh yeah? More dangerous than being in close quarters with Darth Vader?”_

_Luke grimaced. “You may not believe it, but he changed—“_

_“Save it for someone who does believe it,” Leia said. “You’re the one who’s deluding yourself—just admit that you picked him over me—“_

_“Leia—!”_

_“_ You picked him over me _, and you picked him over the good of the Galaxy,” Leia said. “You’re a fool if you think he’ll ever be anything like the man you imagined. Your dreams about Anakin were just that—the dreams of a child.”_

_Luke pressed his lips together, as if to keep himself from saying anything he regretted. He balled his hands into fists, then released them, exhaling slowly._

_“You’re angry,” he said, finally. “Holding onto that anger will only hurt you. When you want help dealing with it, you know where to find me.”_

_He stood, bowed to her stiffly, and marched out of the clearing, leaving her alone with her work and the gentle sounds of Endor’s forest moon._

* * *

 

               That had been their first fight as brother and sister, but not the last. They had made up, afterwards, but Leia had never gone back on her refusal to learn the ways of the Jedi. “ _I will never have anything to do with something that makes me more like him_ ,” she told Luke, and that had been her final word on the matter.

               Now, sitting next to a fire on another distant world, in another empty forest, she wondered where that refusal had gotten her.

               Dinner was one of the ready-meals Leia had bought as part of her peace offering to Vader: greens, tubers and protein cubes with added hot water to create a murky broth. Leia watched as Ben raised his bowl to his lips and sipped—table manners that Leia never would have allowed, but Vader was lacking when it came to even basic eating utensils, so she simply had to put up with it. She stared down into her own bowl, mulling over what she’d seen that day—the merger of her present and the past that refused to stay behind her.

               She hadn’t been lying when she told Luke was had too many duties to take off on a metaphysical journey with him. She owed it to the martyred dead—the ones who had fallen believing their death served a higher purpose—she owed it to _them_ to see the Republic rebuilt, justice restored, to ensure their deaths weren’t as pointless and tragic as every other death under Palpatine’s regime. She felt the weight of her father’s dreams on her shoulders, the weight of his death, and her mother’s death, and all the dead of Alderaan anchoring her to reality while Luke lived with his head in the clouds.

               So she lied. She lied to the Galaxy about her faith in Anakin’s role as a special agent for the New Republic militia, and she’d lied again about his death when his infamy outweighed his usefulness. She’d lied through her teeth to her son about what had become of his grandfather, and never let Luke tell Ben any more than the barest details of Vader’s life. Luke had challenged her, again and again, but after time she wore him down and their fights were fewer, further between, and he spent more and more time secluded with his father—trying to escape the claustrophobic fortress of falsehoods Leia had made to protect herself

               It was Han who cracked first—giving way under the weight of all the lies. They’d had their last fight in the kitchen of the home they’d made together, screaming at each other over dishes and Ben’s childish artwork.

               _“How long are you going to lie to him, Leia? How long are you going to lie to the Galaxy about Vader?”_

_“As long as I have to,” she’d replied, with ice in her words._

_“He’s not getting any better! Ben’s getting worse, and you’re too afraid to admit it, because then you’d have to actually do something about it!”_

               She still wasn’t sure what Han had in mind as far as ‘doing something’, but it almost certainly was _not_ taking Ben to Vader. And yet, here she was—how desperate she had been to come here. It had been the last encounter with Ben, where he screamed that he would kill her, and had gone so far to pick up the carving knife out of the drawer—long, with a ghostpearl handle too big for his little hand—it was then she knew she’d had enough.

               Ben put down his empty bowl and went to where Vader was standing at the edge of the clearing, looking up at the star-studded sky, lost in his thoughts. He glanced over his shoulder at Leia—briefly, with a feigned nonchalance that any mother would immediately suspect. Clearly, he thought he was too far from where she sat to be heard.

               He was wrong.

               “I want to tell you something,” Ben said, somberly. Vader looked down and him then kneeled, slowly, to accommodate his aging joints, coming eye-level with Ben.

               “Oh?”

               “You said it was better that people thought you were dead,” Ben said, looking into Vader’s face with large, dark eyes. “You said it brought people comfort.”

               Vader tilted his head back, as if trying to parse the meaning of Ben’s words. “I did.”

               “Well,” Ben said, leaning in secretively. “Not everyone who thinks you’re dead is comforted by it.”

               Leia gripped the edges of her bowl tight, careful not to look up and alert Ben. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vader stiffen.

               “Who?” he asked, fighting to keep his questions casual.

               Ben shrugged. “I just wanted you to know,” he said, shifting, clearly lying but not with malice or guile. “Because you’ve been a friend to me.”

               Vader reached out, placing a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Ben,” he asked, solemnly, as if fighting to keep the softness in his words: “do you have many other friends?”

               The fire cast shadows on Ben’s face, his dark eyes glinting from his suddenly unnatural pallor of his face:

               “Just one.”

               Leia’s blood was like ice in her veins—she knew, the way she knew the instant before the Death Star fired, the way she knew the spectre of death had come for one of her comrades—she knew, with the awful power she inherited from Darth Vader that something was _wrong_ —

               Vader’s head snapped up, and in a second Leia drew her blaster—there was a rustle in the bushes, and a sound like scales sliding on foliage—

               “Get Ben inside,” Vader grunted, pushing Ben behind him.

               “But—“

               “They are no threat to me,” he snarled, dropping low. “It’s the child they’re after.” He reached out with his hand, and Leia heard the sound of an organic body violently colliding with a tree trunk—she didn’t hear it get back up. “Go!”

               Ben’s face was lit up with morbid delight, but Leia wrapped her arm around his chest and dragged him backwards. She swung her blaster, trying to cover all her angles, never lowering it until she felt the wood door against her back.

               “Inside! Now! Go!”

               She slammed the door behind her, cursing when she remembered there was no lock. She dragged the heavy plastisteel table and heaved with a strength she didn’t know she had, barricading the only entrance. Ben was at the window, face pressed against the crudely-installed transparisteel, and despite his protests she pulled him back. She caught a glimpse of Vader—his tunic now spattered with blood, tossing aside the limp body of one of the creatures. His victory was short lived, and more came out of the woods, snarling—

               Vader snarled back at them—

               The creatures paused for a moment, their yellow eyes calculating their odds. In that moment, Leia knew why Vader had no defenses prepared against them, why he had not been attacked before—these animals knew better than most what an apex predator looked like.

               The scaled animals seemed to decide on a retreat, melting back into the woods as suddenly as they’d appeared—but Vader’s bloodlust wasn’t sated. She heard his crashing footsteps go further and further form the cabin until they disappeared entirely, and she was left alone to keep vigil against all the murderous beasts that called the forest home.

* * *

 

_“I told you not to trust him.”_

_Leia looked up at her father, meeting his eyes in her vanity mirror. She paused, mid-brush stroke, the fine boar bristles cutting grooves in her long hair. “Who?”_

_Bail sighed. He stood behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders, looking sadly at her in the mirror. “I kept you hidden from Vader for so long. We sacrificed so much for you.”_

_“Of course,” she said. She put her brush down, reaching up to lay a hand on top of his. Bail’s fingers seemed to follow the neckline of her white nightgown, encircling her throat. “I’m so grateful.”_

_“Are you? You seem intent on undoing everything we worked for.” Bail looked down at her, accusing. “How could you, Leia? How could you bring your son to him?”_

_“My son? I don’t understand—”_

_“You forgot about me,” Bail said, accusingly. His fingers dug into the hollow of her collarbone. “You replaced me.”_

_“No! Never! That’s not what happened—”_

_If you still honor my memory, you will leave this place.”_

_“ I can’t, I have to…there’s something I have to do—”_

_“LEAVE NOW!”_

Leia’s eyes snapped open and she gasped for air, wide awake. She saw a shape in the dark and she screamed—but no, it was only Ben, standing over her, his eyes rolled back into his head—

He stirred, seeming to come to himself. “Mommy?” he asked, uncertainly.

“I’m sorry, sweet one,” she said, putting a hand against her chest. Her heart beat frantically against her fingers. “Where you sleepwalking again?”

“Maybe.” He sounded uncertain—or truthful.

She could never tell.

Leia pushed her chair back and went for her bag, fumbling for her chrono. She must have fallen asleep slumped at the kitchen table, waiting for Vader to return—her blaster lay just where she’d left it, hot and ready to go. She clumsily thumbed the safety on and shoved it in her belt.

“Go back to bed,” she said, fumbling for a packet of instant-caf. “Mommy will stay up and wait for your grandfather to come back.” Ben shook his head.

“Don’t want to sleep.”

Leia rubbed her eyes—she was tempted to tell him to keep watch, and she’d go back to bed. “You don’t have to be scared. We’re safe in here.”

Ben looked at her with solemn eyes, and she sighed.

“OK. I’ll make you a hot drink.”

* * *

 

Vader returned well after daybreak—Leia was grateful that Ben had long since gone to bed, so he didn’t see the gore-crusted nightmare of his grandfather after the chase. Leia refused to let him back in to the cabin until he went to the river and scrubbed himself clean with a handful of soap-crystals—handed to him through the open window. He returned, sullen and soggy but markedly less disgusting, carrying a fish as long as Leia’s arm. He threw the fish on the ground in front of her and stalked to his room without a word.

“Good morning to you too,” she murmured to herself. The fish stared up at her, its lifeless eyes somehow accusing.

“I don’t want to hear it from you,” she said, crossly. She it had been well over a day since she’d had a restful sleep, and it was starting to wear on her.

The smell of cooking fish coaxed Ben to wakefulness and he tumbled out of the cabin, with a cheerfulness Leia envied. The events of the previous night were seemingly forgotten. He ate with gusto and spent the rest of the morning into the afternoon playing with the bones, sticking them in the ground to make cities of strange, spiky buildings and pebbled streets. He whispered to himself, telling himself little stories Leia could only-half hear, and she had another cup of caf in relative peace.

Something stirred in the nearby pit Vader used for food waste, and Leia tensed—she glanced to the cabin and saw Vader in the doorway, hand outstretched. He gestured upwards, and a writhing skeletal fish floated through the air, bobbing and undulating in an invisible current.

“What is _wrong_ with you—?!” She started, just as Ben shrieked in delight. She clamped her mouth shut, holding back a string of words she didn’t want to hear Ben using later. The skeleton fish moved like a ribbon through the air, fluttering in and out of Ben’s grasp. Glittering, iridescent fish scales rose from the ground where she’d been preparing breakfast, winking in the light before assembling themselves over the fish in a grotesque parody of life. Ben reached out, trying to touch the fish, but his hand passed through it as the bones moved and reformed to avoid his touch. Ben chased the fish back and forth across the clearing, laughing and shouting. Without warning, it collapsed to the ground in a heap of old bones and scales. He looked up at Vader, disappointed.

Vader pointed at the heap. “Your turn.”

               Ben’s face twisted. “I _can’t_! Not that many!”

Vader walked over to the pile, bracing himself against the ground as he settled into a meditative pose. Ben pouted, but Vader fixed him with a look and he knelt as well. Vader offered the fish’s skull, expectantly.

“It begins with one,” he said.

It took Ben hours of faltering tries, but in time he was able to move more and more of the bones in unison. Soon he had the skull, three vertebrae, and a handful of ribs assembled in the air. His creature didn’t move smoothly, and tended to fall to the ground in a jumble of bones. Leia could tell his frustration was ready to boil over.

“I can’t do it like you!” he shouted, as he creature clattered to the forest floor yet again. Vader looked down at him, his expression cool.

“How long have you been learning about the Force?”

Ben seemed confused by the question. “My whole life.”

Vader’s eyes flicked to Leia, probing—but for what, she couldn’t say. He turned back to Ben: “your life has not been terribly long.”

“I’m not a baby,” Ben groused.

“No,” Vader agreed, “but you are not an old man like me, either.” Ben seemed to consider this, looking up and studying the lines on Vader’s face.

“But I’m supposed to be good,” he said, discouraged. “I’m the most powerful.”

“Of whom?”

Ben shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “I’m your grandson. I should be like you.”

Vader shook his head. “The only person you should be is Ben Solo,” he said. “You will grow into that name and wear it well.”

“But—!” Ben started, then clamped his jaw shut.

“But?” Ben looked at the ground.

“My destiny is elsewhere,” he said, in a small voice. “I’ll—I’ll never reach it like this.”

“Why not?”

  _Why not_ was not the question Leia had, but she waited to see where Vader’s questioning led—even if brusque nature of her questions stirred memories she’d rather forget.

“It’s not _my_ fault. I’m being held back,” Ben answered, fiercely.

“Who is holding you back?” Vader asked. His words were quiet, but there was a boiling energy beneath him that triggered every one of Leia’s warning instincts. Memories of the Death Star crowded the back of her mind. “Ben, who teaches you the ways of the Force?”

“Uncle Luke told me some things,” Ben whispered. The distress in her son’s voice made every nerve in Leia’s body scream. She curled her hands into fists.

“But not everything,” Vader said, finishing the thought. “There are things your Uncle Luke doesn’t know.” Ben shrugged, blinking back tears Leia could hardly stand it—

“Who else?” Vader asked, sharply—and that was it.

“No one!” It was Leia who broke first. “Who could? There is no one else, in case you _forgot_!”

“I asked Ben,” Vader replied, with an arrogance that made her blood boil—but Ben stood abruptly, his face pale.

“No one!” he cried, echoing his mother’s words.

“Are you lying to me?” Vader asked, more statement than question.

“No—“

“It is useless,” Vader’s voice was flat, and his eyes were hard. “I sense your deception. You are hiding something from me—“

“Stop! I can’t tell you! Please stop!”

“You can, and you _will_ —“ There was a hint of coercion behind his words, a stirring in the Force, and something in Leia’s mind snapped. She had heard _enough_.

“How _dare_ you?” she went to Ben’s side, and he pressed his face in her tunic. “How dare you _grill_ my son like he was some kind of _prisoner_ —?”

“You want me to help the boy?” Vader asked, cruelly. “We made a rule concerning _lies_ —“

“You think you can just call my son a _liar_ and—“ Leia glanced down. Ben had his hands clamped over his ears, his eyes shut, his expression pained.

“Ben,” Leia said, her voice soft. “Ben, sweetheart, it’s alright.” She knelt down, rubbing his back. “It’s alright, sweetie. Why don’t you go inside?” She looked up at Vader, glaring. “Your grandfather was wrong to talk to you like that. Go inside and dry your tears.”

Vader scowled, but Leia ushered Ben to the cabin, pushing him gently inside before shutting the door behind him—firmly. She rounded on Vader, feeling her blood beat like a war drum in her ears.

“You think you can treat _my son_ like one of your lackeys—?”

“Someone is,” Vader said, coldly. “Who has the boy spoken to?”

Leia snorted. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Darkness haunts the boy. Something foul has sunk its claws into him.”

“ _Foul_ ,” Leia repeated, spitting the word in Vader’s face. “You’re a monster, you’re evil, and you want to call my son _foul_ —“

“Leia,” he said, sharply, “you’re not hearing me—“

“Oh, I think I hear you just fine—“

“ _LISTEN_!” Vader boomed. The trees around them rattled with the force of his command, causing a flock of birds to take wing. The soft sound of their retreat faded, and it was eerily quiet in the forest clearing.

“Ben has ideas that are not his own,” he continued, in a low voice. “Someone else speaks with his mouth. We will need to return to your home, I will need a list of all who have had contact with him—“

“Return?” Leia asked, astonished. “You’re not _returning_ anywhere. The decision of the High Tribunal was final.”

“You cannot seriously be concerned about the petty laws of your insurgent—“

“You’re not above _justice_ ,” Leia retorted. “I’m not springing you from here so you can drip more poison in Ben’s ear—“

“How can you think I _am_ the danger to Ben—“

“Easily! Very easily! I didn’t want to come here at all, it was clearly a mistake—“

“I don’t care what you think about me,” Vader rumbled. “I know your disdain. But there is a viper in your nest, and if you are so arrogant you will not see—“ Leia laughed right in his face at that.

 “The Jedi are dead—the Sith are dead! There’s no one else in the Galaxy with their powers—believe me, I _looked_. I looked high and low to try and get Ben help from anyone but _you_.”

Vader’s expression hardened, and she could hear his prosthetics groaning with strain as he curled his hands into fists.

“We want the same thing,” he ground out, low and dangerous. “We want to help your boy.”

“Lies,” Leia threw the word in his face. “You don’t want to help Ben—you want to make him just like you—“

“No!”

“You do! He idolizes you, it would be so easy—just a few words—get him to stop trusting me, Luke, his teachers—“

“Leia—“

“Make him afraid of what’s in his own head so you can—“

“Leia—!”

“I’ve heard enough,” she declared. “Ben and I are _leaving_. We’re never coming back to this evil place— I was a fool to come here in the first place, to think your sickness could fix _his_. “

There was a ringing silence in the clearing, as if the echoes of their vicious words still reverberated in the air around him.

“The boy should go to Luke,” Vader finally said, after a long moment. “For at least a year.”

“That’s big of you,” Leia shot back, sarcastically.

“You lose nothing if I am wrong,” Vader said, with a note of urgency in his voice. “You said there is no one else. Send the boy away. He is not safe where he is.”

“He’s with his mother, where he belongs,” Leia ground out. She turned on her heel and stomped back in the clearing, not turning back to look—but knowing, with the power she wished she didn’t have, that he was standing there, stock-still, watching her go.

Inside the cabin, Ben launched himself at her, burying his tear-streaked face in her tunic. “Don’t listen to him!” he wailed

“I’m not,” she assured him, trying to brush away her anger with Vader and show Ben a little tenderness. “You won’t have to listen to him anymore.”

Ben stopped, looking up at her—he sniffled, but his expression changed to something harder. “Why?”

“We’re leaving,” she told him.

“Where are we going?” he asked, suspiciously. She looked at him for a long moment.

“Home,” she said. She pushed away the idea that she’d been taken in by crocodile tears. _He’s a child_ , she told herself, sternly. _A child who’s been exposed to Darth Vader_.

“Who will teach me?” Leia took a deep breath.

“We’ll see. Go get your things.”

But Ben didn’t move. “I have to learn. Will I go to Uncle Luke?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Leia snapped, impatiently. Ben watched her with red-rimmed eyes, and something stirred in the Force.

“Are you going to send me away?” he asked, darkly.

“I said we’re going home,” Leia repeated. “We’re leaving _now_. Go get your things.”

“I _want_ to _know_ —“ Leia cut him off by slamming her fist against the table.

“You will do as you’re told!” she shouted. “I am your mother and you will do what I say! No go!” She pointed, but Ben didn’t move. For a moment, she could see herself from the outside, and she hated what she saw—Bail had never raised his voice to her, never slammed his fist and ordered her like a tyrant—

But she was tired. She had already failed at motherhood. All that was left was for her to scrape together the last of her strength and do what she should have done years ago. So she stood, challenging Ben, almost daring him to fly into one of his rages— _you have a tantrum and I’ll have one too, we’ll see who wins_.

Ben looked at her for a long moment, his eyes burning, but turned for his room as ordered. Leia waited until she heard the sound of Ben rummaging through his things. She removed her commlink form her belt, considering—

The door swung open. Leia met Vader’s eyes. _Say all those lies to me again, I dare you. Just try it_ —

“You cannot bar me from my own prison,” Vader grated. Leia moved aside, giving him ample room to sweep past her. She stepped outside, waiting at the window to make sure—

She watched Ben come out of his room, running to Vader. “Am I going away?” he asked, darkly. Vader stared down at him for a long moment.

“Your mother is called away to Coruscant,” he said, finally. “It is urgent that she go, and you with her.”

“But what about you?”

“I will remain.”

“Will we come back?”

“Soon,” Leia heard the words, like granite boulders grating against one another. “We will meet again.”

 _Not if I have anything to do with it_ , she thought, darkly. She watched Vader disappear into his quarters, then reappear and march his way out the door. She walked to the edge of the clearing, on the opposite side Vader had gone, raising her commlink to her lips.

“This is a communication for the office of the Representative of New Alderaan. It is for those with class aurek-four-aurek-nine-zero or higher only,” she began. They were far beyond the range of even the most boosted holonet receivers, but her pre-recorded message would send the instant she passed into the Outer Rim—she wouldn’t have a chance to get cold feet.

“Shreena, this is Leia—I’ve—“ _I’ve been a fool_. “Listen, I—I need you to make contact with the facility we were talking about,” she had to force words past her lips. “Ben—tell them to be ready to receive Ben. Send along the datachip I have in the safe. It has—all his files—what they need to know. Tell them—“ she swallowed. “Tell them we’ll be there in three rotations.”

 _This is what’s good for him_ , she told herself, sternly. _Stop being sentimental about it. This isn’t a holo-novel, a stint in nature isn’t going to cure him_. She ached at the idea that there was anything wrong with her son, but pushed the feelings down. She took a long, deep breath, and then another, and when she finally felt like she’d bested the urge to cry she went back to the cabin.

“Ben,” she called, softly. “Are you almost ready?” No answer—it was quiet in the cabin. Her stomach twisted, uneasily.

“Ben?” she asked, louder. “Ben?” She opened the door to their room, but no one was there. She reached out with her senses, trying to locate the soft, warm feeling she associated with her son.

“Ben? _BEN!_ ”

But Ben was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a double update, go back and read Chapter 3 or this won't make any sense

Night was falling. Leia was losing daylight with every passing minutes, and she frantically tore through the darkening forest. She’d left the path long ago, trying to follow her vague sense of where Ben could be, and now she was pushing through overgrown bushes and thorny vines, branches tearing at her face and clothes.

“BEN! WHERE ARE YOU?” she shouted. She stopped, panting, then cupped her hands around her mouth: “BEN!”

               There were so many things in the darkness that could hurt a little boy—sudden ravines, slippery rocks on the edge of a raging river, poisonous plants, hunger, thirst—

               The hungry beasts that prowled the woods—

               Leia heard crashing, thunderous footfalls in the distance, and froze. She drew her blaster with shaking hands, ready to defend herself—ready to fight to the death to give Ben one less obstacle towards survival—

               She stayed her hand at the last minute, just as the clearly recognizable shape of Vader broke through the brush.

               “What happened?” he demanded.

               “He ran,” she said, her voice hoarse. “He—he must have heard more than I thought—“

               “Ben is not making his decisions alone,” Vader told her. “Someone else is pulling his strings.”

               “He’s a _child_!” Leia shouted. “Children run away! You’re so deluded and paranoid, you see phantoms and ghosts and—“ she broke off, shaking her head. “Just help me find Ben.”

               “You sense it,” Vader said, quietly. “You sense the truth of my words. Why are you fighting it?”

               “Because they’re _nonsense_!” she exploded. “An invisible man preying on my son—“

               “Your son has great potential,” Vader rumbled. “You know it is possible for those strong in the Force to speak across great distances. Is it so impossible that a creature operating in the shadows took notice of the boy’s powers--?”

               “Who? What creature?” Leia demanded. “How—none of this matters. You’re wasting our time! We have to find him--“

               “You cannot help them until you accept what’s happening,” Vader said, firmly.

               “Of course I don’t accept it!” Leia shouted. “It’s—it’s—“

               “Leia,” Vader said. There was no anger in his voice, no haughty condescension—only….understanding.

It was too much. She turned, curling her hand into a fist and striking a tree as hard as she could.

“ _How am I supposed to protect him from that?!”_

She felt the pain in her hand dimly, on the other side of her rage, and when she looked down her knuckles were torn and bleeding. She struck the tree again, beating against it with the bottom of her fist. She felt Vader come up behind her, watching her without judgement.

“I’ve _killed_ men who came to hurt my son,” she said, raggedly. “I kept him same—from kidnappers, from assassins—from _you_ , and your _memory_ —and then, when we found out about his problems, from the doctors who wanted to lock him up—and now—“ she stopped, slumping against the tree, resting her forehead against its trunk:

“And now it turns out it was for nothing. I couldn’t keep him safe at all.” She turned, staring at Vader. “Go on. Gloat. I deserve it. I was so arrogant I let someone hurt my baby—I let it happen right before my eyes. I _failed_ him.”

But Vader didn’t gloat. He tore a long a strip from the  bottom of his tunic and offered it to Leia, silently. She stared at it for a long moment before taking it, wrapping it around her bruised and bloody knuckles.

“The past is the past. The future remains unwritten,” he told her, simply. “If you do not control your anger, it will control you.”

“You think I don’t know—“

“You will need your strength, not your fury, if you are going to save Ben.” He interrupted. He stared at her, and Leia could feel the roiling anger  beneath his icy calm—the same outrage she was feeling, the same desire for vengeance, baying for blood, kept on a short leash where it couldn’t get in the better of him.

“Show me,” she said, finally. “What must I do?” Vader offered his hand, and Leia looked at it, reluctantly.

“The bond you share with Ben can be obscured, but not totally blocked. We’ll locate him first.”

Leia stared down at his proffered hand. “And then?”

“Then we find who is hurting him.” His words were even, but Leia got the impression of white teeth and a spray of red blood.

Vader would not take prisoners.

That suited her just fine.

She grabbed his hand before she could talk herself out of it—she felt his presence in her mind, like the Death Star all over again, and she shuddered—

_Endure it for Ben for Ben for Ben for Ben—_

But Vader’s touch was light this time, he laid gentle fingers against the gold cord stretching out from her into the heard of the forest and plucked it gently, she felt it reverberate—

“The cave!” she gasped, and the images washed over her—Ben, huddled alone in the darkness—

No, not alone—

She opened her eyes, and Vader nodded. “Quickly. Our time is short.”

* * *

 

There was no moon that night, but the darkness was alive with movement. The forest seemed to seethe with life, filling the void with the impression of cruel, searching eyes. Leia stumbled in the dark, fighting to keep up with Vader’s longer strides, desperate not to twist her ankle—she couldn’t stop, she couldn’t be anything but ready to fight when they found Ben.

_You cannot rely on your sight_ , Vader’s voice rang in her mind, and she winced. _Open your senses to the Force_.

 She exhaled roughly, nearly overwhelmed by frustration. How could she make her way in the pitch black with her eyes closed—?

For Ben. She would do it for Ben. She inhaled sharply, reaching out along the bond the way Vader had done. He was close—she could do it.

_Be brave, sweet one._

She felt Vader come to a stop. She passed him, cautiously, squinting in the faint light of the stars above. The mouth of the cave yawned open before them, darkness on darkness. Leia hesitated, imagined _reaching_ outwards with her mind—

She felt something move—

“This place is strong with the Force,” Vader rumbled behind her. He laid a cautious hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. “Listen—the Dark Side has taken a hold here, now. You can sense it.”

She did—her stomach twisted and her skin crawled. It was a sensation she had previously only associated with  Vader’s presence—with the Death Star—

“Yes,” he said. “You know it well.”

“Nothing I haven’t beaten before,” she said, acidly. “Let’s go.”

“Wait—“ Vader reached for her shoulder again, but stopped short. “You may—encounter things,” he said. There was something in his voice she couldn’t quite read. “Visions, memories. Dreams. Most will be false, tricks sent by our enemy to deceive you and allow him to escape. There _is_ a chance the Force may reveal truths to you—but you must not dwell on them. Whatever you see, you must stay in the present, do you understand?”

“I understand,” Leia said, hollowly. “No more waiting.”

She plunged forward into the darkness, trusting only instinct to keep her from falling.

There was a dim glimmer of light ahead—the beginning of Vader’s crystals. She ran to them, knowing that Ben would be at the end of the trail—but stopped. The kyber was glowing a dark, ominous red, painting the walls with bloody shadows. She took a few more uneasy steps, resting her hand on the heel of her blaster. She came to a bend in the cave and drew it, pressing herself against the wall.

“On my signal—“ she started, turning—but Vader was gone.

Leia gripped the handle of her blaster, feeling her heart hammer in her chest. She hadn’t heard him leave—she hadn’t felt his presence vanish—she hadn’t sensed _anything_. He was just—gone. She doubled back as far as she dared, but found no sign of him. The crystals pulsed, casting twisting shadows on the walls—there, the shape of his helmet, and there, his armored silhouette—there, his billowing cape—

_He warned me_ , she thought, tamping down her panic. _This isn’t real. This isn’t_ —

She touched the walls, and they felt real enough—as did the ground beneath her feet.

She wanted to scream in frustration. There was no _time_ for this. She felt Ben at the end of her bond, she knew his time was running short—she returned to the bend in the cave, rounding it, blaster drawn.

She stared in horror.

Instead of the winding, snakelike tunnel she remembered, she found herself in a huge open chamber, the walls riddled with tunnels—each tunnel lit by more crystals. She was lost. Which one of these would take her to Ben? Which one would lead her back to Vader.

“Mommy!” Ben’s cry echoed through the tunnels, distorted by distance—which one? Where had it come from?

“Ben!” She cried. “I hear you! Where are you?”

“Mommy, please!” Ben was sobbing now. Leia tore through the chamber, but none of the tunnels where right—where _was_ he—?

“You won’t find him that way.” Leia started at the voice, turning around and firing blindly.

“Violence? Oh Leia. I raised you better than that.”

“Daddy!” Leia cried, reflexively. She started to lower her blaster, then stopped. “No—you’re not real.”

“This place is a powerful nexus of the Force,” Bail said, coming closer. “I can appear to you, here—as if I were flesh and blood.” He put a hand on Leia’s face, and it was warm.

“How—?”

“I was brought here by your turmoil,” Bail went on, sadly. “Your grief. You know what you’ve done is wrong.”

“I had to,” she said. “You have to understand. Ben—“

“Ben needs a doctor, Leia,” Bail said, accusingly. “Not a murderer with some magic tricks. I didn’t think you were easily impressed by glowing lights and floating rocks.”

“That’s not—!”

“I thought you missed me, Leia,” Bail said, looking at her with sad eyes. “I thought you missed our home. Have you forgotten how I died?”

“Never,” she bit out.

“I think you have. You’ve forgotten why Ben will never inherit the house in New Aldera—why he’ll never even go there, never visit our ancestral home, much less know his heritage—why do you think he’s so sick in the first place?”

“That doesn’t—make any sense—“ Leia said, but the words were difficult to form. It did make sense—being adrift in this evil, broken Galaxy had certainly been what made Ben go so wrong…it was Vader who took her home from her…

“You know I’m telling you the truth.” Bail rested a hand on his shoulder. “But it’s not too late to undo what Vader has done to your child.”

“It’s—not?”

“No, Leia—you did such a good job keeping him away for so long. There’s still a chance to save him from your mistake.” Bail made a sweeping motion with his arm, and the air shimmered—there, there was Vader, hiding in one of the tunnels like a coward—he was crouched, almost kneeling against the floor, with his back turned to her—

“Working against you,” Bail said, disgust in his voice. “Just like his plan was all along.”

“He—“

“You know he can’t change,” Bail went on. “You know what he did can’t be undone.” He reached down, wrapping his hands around hers—and her blaster.

“Kill him. At last, our people will have justice.”

Leia faltered. This wasn’t right. She hadn’t come here for justice—she was here to save a life.

“Leia,” Bail urged. “What are you waiting for? Shoot him!”

“I—“ she hesitated. “I—“ Leia turned, and she saw what Vader was holding—a small, dark haired figure, kicking and fighting against his grasp.

“Will you let him hurt your child—?”

Bail stopped short, gasping. He looked down at the smoldering hole that had appeared in his abdomen.

“How could you?” he wheezed. “Your own father—?”

“You’re not my father,” she hissed. “You’re not my father any more than Vader is.” She leveled her blaster on the imposter. “How dare you wear his face? How dare you steal his voice?”

She squeezed the trigger and the creature shrieked, its form twisting and melting. She fired again and again—

 “Leia! Leia, its gone, stop shooting!”

Leia gasped, the sudden weight on a hand on her shoulder jerking her back into reality. She wheeled again, but it was only Vader. He withdrew his touch, holding his hands up in surrender.

“What—?” Leia gasped. “What—?”

“You bested it,” Vader said, firmly. “You’ve forced it to retreat. That’s all you need to think about right now. We will speak of it later.” Leia stared at him, her mind still reeling.

“Ben,” Vader reminded her, urgently. “He is close. He escaped my grasp, but cannot have gone far.” His words penetrating the fog in Leia’s brain and she nodded. The path before her had become straight once again—the light from the crystals showed a dim, faltering blue.

“Ben,” Leia called. “Ben—“ she stumbled, but followed her bond as straight as an arrow. “I’m here—“

She rounded a corner, and there he was—trapped at a dead end, curled into a miserable ball, dim against the backdrop of swirling crystal galaxies. “Go away!” he shrieked. “Go away, liar!”

Leia dropped her blaster, forcing herself to walk—not run—to Ben’s side. “I want to talk to you,” she said, gently. “About what happened earlier—“

“I DON’T!” Ben screamed. “I don’t want to talk to you, ever!” Leia pressed forward, undeterred.

“Why not?”

“Because you _lied_ ,” he seethed. He turned, pointing and accusing finger at Vader. “And you lied! You broke a Rule!”

Leia closed her eyes. It was as she feared. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said, faltering. “I was—wrong—but please, understand—“

“I understand just fine,” Ben snarled. “You don’t want me. You think I’m too broken—too much work—you want to send me away so you can have another baby, a _better_ one—“

“No!” Leia shouted, with enough ferocity that Ben was taken off-guard. “How could you say—?” she stopped, feeling fire in her veins. “Is _he_ telling you that?”

“It doesn’t matter who told me, if it’s true—“

“It’s a _lie_! Ben—“ Leia took another step closer, but Ben shrank away from her, baring his teeth. She knelt instead, trying to come to his eye level. “Ben, I should never have told you things that weren’t true. It was wrong, I’m sorry I did it—“

“You’re not sorry!” Ben’s face was twisted, in that moment he looked more like a demon than a child. “You would do it again!”

“If I thought it was the right thing for you,” Leia said, sternly. “It wasn’t—I shouldn’t have—but I did. I did it because I thought it would make you happy.”

“He is lying to you for the same reasons.” Leia turned, startled at Vader’s voice. “He tells you things you think you want to hear—he lies to tear you down, and then he lies to build you back—but only back in the way he wants you to be.”

“You don’t know that,” Ben snarled.

“I do.” Vader was radiating a quiet calm Leia had never seen from him before—a calm that reminded him of Luke. “I know it well.”

“He’s not lying about how different I am!” Ben shrieked. “I’ve never been like the others! I’ve always been bad—!”

“You’re not bad,” Leia wanted to cry. “There’s nothing wrong with being different—needing a little extra help—“

“I don’t want to be different! I want to be strong!”

“Ben,” Vader was pleading. He knelt, leaning forward, one hand against the ground, the other offered to Ben. “Please. I know—I know that it hurts. I know what he is promising you—to make it stop hurting. But that is not a power he possesses. He can only do more harm—to you, to your mother, to everyone you care about—“

“He’s always been there for me!” Ben shouted. “He’s been with me since I was born! What about you? You didn’t help me! You _hid_ —“ he turned, pointing accusingly at Leia “—and she lied!”

“She lied to protect you,” Vader said. “I left to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” Ben was nearly spitting. “I’m alone!”

“From _me_ ,” Vader’s voice broke. “She was protecting you from me, Ben! From my legacy! From my crimes!”

“But you can teach me to be like you—“

“I would _never_ ,” Vader’s voice cracked against the stone walls like a thunderclap. “If this teacher thinks your destiny is the same as mine, then he does not love you. He does not want joy for you—only grief and misery. I would see you thrive—not languish in darkness.”

He paused, and his voice softened: “I would give every ounce of my power to be someone else, Ben—and I would give all of that and even more to ensure you were freed from my destiny.”

Ben’s expression faltered. He hesitated. “But—“

“Please Ben,” Leia said, her voice shaking. “We love you. All of us—me, your daddy, Uncle Luke, and your grandfather too—please let us help you—“

“I—“ Ben hesitated, just out of Vader’s reach. “I—“ He looked into his grandfather’s eyes and took one careful step forward.

“Do you trust me?” Vader asked, softly. Ben looked at Leia.

“Go to him, sweet one. It’s OK. It’s going to be OK.”

Ben took one step closer to Vader, then another—until he was close enough for Vader to lay a hand on his shoulder.

“I—“ Ben started, but the instant he opened his mouth Vader shoved his hand between Ben’s teeth. Leia screamed, but before she could run to pull Ben from his grasp Vader jerked his arm away—pulling from Ben’s mouth a serpent, as thick as her wrist and longer than her arm. Its scales were obsidian glass, but it didn’t glitter in the light of the crystals, instead seeming to swallow the light whole. Ben choked, gasping as the last inch of tail left his throat—then his eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed.

“BEN!” Leia screamed again, running to his side. “Ben, Ben—“ she shook him hysterically, but he didn’t stir—she looked up at Vader.

“What have you done—?”

Vader didn’t seem to hear her. His eyes blazed with furious blue light, his face was hard as stone—there was a cruelty in the set of his mouth. “You cannot hide from me,” he said—but his voice was distorted, it set Leia’s teeth on edge. The serpent hissed and all around them the crystals grew brighter, lighting up the cave like daylight.

“You challenge me? You lay claim to what is mine?”

The serpent shrieked, and Leia clutched Ben to her breast.

“WHAT WAS EARNED BY BLOOD AND FIRE?” Vader roared, and the cave hummed—each crystal vibrating with an intensity that made her bones ache. The Force—

The Force crashed down on her like a wave—

The kyber crystals glowed even brighter, and Leia was forced to shield her eyes against their light—it was like witnessing the birth of a star, trapped in the heart of a nuclear reaction—

The light was blinding, turning everything to white—

She saw nothing.

She saw—

The bright white was pricked with darkness, small spots of void that grew in number until they outnumbered the brightness and she was surrounded by stars, each point of kyber becoming a spinning luminary, swirling in complex, overlapping orbits. She walked among them like a giant, the thousands of jewel-bright planets and their stars. She could see their paths- where they had been, where they would be, where they would return to, write across the void, each path turning on an axis, and at the center—

She law Anakin—Anakin Skywalker in all his awesome, terrible power: giant, luminous, his hair long hair and beard made from streams of light, his skin crackling with energies she could barely stand to look at, his eyes glowing white-hot like two suns. He still held the snake in his fist, it screeched with pain, writhing, whipping its head back and forth, fangs exposed—the serpent found and opening and sank its teeth into Anakin’s bicep and Leia gasped, but he wrapped his fist around the creature’s neck and wrenched it from his arm.  

               **Your power cannot touch me**

               She didn’t hear the words, but they echoed across the void like water crashing against the rocks. The snake writhed in his grasp, hissing, shrieking, but its contact with Anakin was burning it—burning it away to nothing—

               **You will not have the boy**

               The snake shrieked in agony as its entire body glowed with that same white light, burning it from within, but Anakin gripped it tighter still, strangled the last of its cries—

               **You are nothing. You have failed. Creature of death, you are already slain.**

**RETURN TO DUST!**

               Leia clapped her hands over her ears, the force of Anakin’s command reverberating like the tolling of a huge bronze bell. The echoes made the stars shake, and the Force _rippled_ , waves and vibrations threatening to shake apart the very foundation she stood upon—

               She couldn’t see Anakin now, both he and the snake were consumed by the incandescent brilliance of his power—

               The world went white—

               Leia was thrown across the cave, stars exploding across her vision as her head hit the floor of the cave. She scrambled upright, half-clawing, half-crawling her way across the floor to where Ben lay still—

               “Ben!” she cried. “Ben! Ben!” she rolled him over, cupping his face in her hands. He was so, so pale—the crystals barely glowed, just enough for her to see his face bathed in blue light—

               To see the steady rise and fall of his chest—

               “He will sleep,” Anakin said, startling her. “But he will live.”

               Leia cradled Ben’s head, pressing his face to her shoulder. She buried her face in his hair, trying to keep herself from shaking. Finally, when she felt certain he wasn’t about to crumble to dust before her eyes, she lowered him gently to the ground, turning to look at Anakin.

               “What was _that_?” she asked, hoarsely.

Anakin raised an eyebrow, as if it was obvious: “The Force.”

She could have hit him. She could have kissed him. “You—you saved Ben.”

Anakin tilted his head back. “I gave you my word I would do all I could for the boy.”

“You—!” she paused, her eyes falling to his arm. “You’re hurt.”

Anakin was clutching his bicep, where the snake had sunk its fangs into him. He removed his hand, hissing in pain, and Leia saw an ugly wound—a sunken depression, as if burned into the skin, in the shape of an elongated handprint—as if someone had attempted to grab him and was torn away, but not before their corrosive touch took its toll. The edges of the wound were already black with rot.

“It will not trouble me for long,” Anakin grunted. He took a pained breath, and Leia saw dark lines radiate out from beneath his hand.

“You’re dying,”

“I’ve been dying for a very long time,” Anakin told her, “this will only accelerate the process.”

“You can’t.”

Anakin down at her. “I have far outlived my time. This is for the best.”

“But you just—“ Leia gestured, helplessly. “You can’t. Don’t you have a lightsaber? If we cut off the arm we can stop the poison—“

“Leia.” Anakin reached out with his good arm, cautiously resting it on her shoulder. “You know I am forbidden from carrying a weapon. You wrote those terms into my exile.”

Leia didn’t know what she felt. Not numb—she wished for numb. There were so many conflicting thoughts, all crashing against each other in her head—the noise was unbearable.

“Ben needs you,” she said, in a strangled voice. “It’s not over for him—you’re the only one who knows how to help him. I can’t do it all by myself.”

“Leia,” this time, Anakin reached out, laying his hand on top of hers. “You have done many impossible things. You will find a way.”

“But—“

“I would have given my life for you thirty years ago,” Anakin said, cutting her off. His breath came sharply, his skin was starkly pale. “I am—happy—to give it—for you now…”

“No!”

Anakin shook his head. “No one—can stop—death. Put aside—these feelings—for Ben’s sake—the Dark Side—cannot—heal—only—destroy—“

Leia knew the Dark Side talk—Luke had given it to her more times than she could count, trying to scare her into training with him—trying to assuage her existing fears of becoming her father…

“Stop talking,” she ordered. She placed her hands on his wound and took a slow, calming breath.

“Leia—“

“Luke says I have this power, too,” she said. She distantly heard the kyber crystals hum—like a powerful engine slowly powering to life. “He told me not to be afraid to use it.”

“Let—me—go—don’t—risk—“

But she felt it, now—more clearly than she’d ever felt it before. It was just like Anakin showed her—the planets moving in their rhythms, turning in their places, rising, falling, breathing, _exhaling_ —

               She stilled her emotions, and the power came roaring through her like water through a burst dam. She felt it flow through her hands, felt the heat of it where she touched Anakin’s skin, felt it burning away the lingering darkness—

               “Impressive,” Anakin said, after a long silence. He moved his hand away, and the wound on his arm was nothing more than a white hand-shaped scar. “Most impressive.”

               “Runs in the family,” Leia said, lightly, but Anakin seemed to get her meaning. He reached out, slowly, hesitantly, and she allowed him to brush his fingers against her cheek.

               “Leia—“ he stopped, turning suddenly, and Leia’s head snapped in the same direction- Ben stirred in his sleep, his eyelids fluttering.

               “We should go,” Leia said. She ran a hand over Ben’s cheek, taking a moment to look down on him.

               “You’re safe now,” she said. “No one will ever hurt you that way again.”

               Ben murmured in his sleep, and she bent over, smelling his hair and planting a gentle kiss on his forehead. She cradled his head for a moment, before turning to Anakin.

               “Will you carry him?”

               She couldn’t say she had forgiven him—that everything between them was erased, undone, purged from their lives. But he had made good on his promise to her—he had been ready to give his life to burn away the lingering evil of his past deeds from her son’s future.

               She didn’t doubt he loved the boy.

               Anakin knelt without speaking, taking Ben gingerly in his arms. Ben seemed so small in his grasp—pale and fragile, and Leia couldn’t banish the thought that the darkness had almost swallowed him whole.

               She was still shaky with the adrenalin of relief, and she thought that Ben could have worse allies against the darkness than someone who knew it so intimately. Anakin seemed to catch that thought and looked at her, only nodding. He cradled Ben in his arms for a moment, resting Ben’s head against his shoulder, before turning to the mouth of the cave, lit with the first golden rays of dawn.

               They emerged into the stillness of early morning, walking in this mist-muffled silence. Leia was tired—she didn’t want to have this conversation—but something nagged at her, and she couldn’t make her decision until she did:

               “How did you know?”

               He glanced at her, his expression unreadable. “Know what?”

               Leia was impatient: “You knew there was someone preying on Ben—someone I never even suspected, without ever having met him. How?”

               Anakin looked down at Ben, instinctively tightening his grip—only stopping when Ben squirmed uncomfortably. “It was familiar to me,” he answered, finally.

               “You’ve seen this before?”

               Anakin’s face tightened, and Leia knew: “It happened to _you_ ,” she breathed, only half-comprehending the magnitude of that realization. Anakin flinched, but her words weren’t an accusation. “The Emperor—?”

               “It wasn’t—“ he stopped himself, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter now. It won’t happen again.” Ben sighed, curling against his shoulder.

               Leia didn’t know what to make of it all—what she had seen, what she had learned, what was still true of her birth father: none of his crimes could be undone. She wasn’t like Luke, she didn’t _forgive_ —she remembered. He believed in mercy, she believed in justice.

               Even so, she wasn’t too proud to see what was right in front of her.

               “Anakin—“ she started, but he turned from her and cocked his head, as if he heard something in the distance. Leia looked up just in time to see a familiar light freighter wink out of hyperspace in the planet’s upper orbit.

               “Han,” Leia said, surprise dulled by weariness.

               “Luke,” Anakin replied, watching the Falcon’s reckless descent, hurtling towards the clearing where Leia had landed only days ago—days that seemed like a lifetime now. He turned to her: “You truly didn’t tell him you were coming here?”

               “I don’t _answer_ to my brother,” Leia replied, tartly. Then, resigned: “Come on. We’ll have to explain ourselves.”

               They arrived in the clearing just as the loading ramp touched down against the forest floor. Han nearly fell out of the Falcon, running blindly towards them, skidding to a halt. He took in the sight of the former Darth Vader holding the limp body of his son—and drew his blaster.

               “Han, stop,” Leia said, wearily. “Ben is fine. He’s—he’s better than fine.”

                “What are you talking about?” Han demanded. “You just—you took off without a word, you kidnapped our _son_ , I didn’t know if you were alive or dead or—“

               “I’m sorry,” Leia said. “I couldn’t—if it hadn’t worked, I couldn’t tell you were we were going…I couldn’t admit it, not even to you.”

               “What?” Han looked up at Anakin, suspiciously. “What worked?”

               Leia opened her mouth, trying to think of the words that could explain what had happened—what they’d experienced, what they’d _endured_ over the past few days—but couldn’t. She was just—exhausted.

               “You reached him,” Luke’s quiet voice made Han start, as if he’d forgotten Luke had come with him—had been the one to show him the way, more likely than not. Luke put a gentle hand against Ben’s forehead, looking up at Anakin.

               “The darkness I sensed is gone.”

               “Some remains,” Anakin rumbled. Leia looked up at him, alarmed. “There are wounds. They will heal in time, but not all of it will vanish.” He looked down at Leia, sensing her dismay:

               “Do not be afraid for him. Both you and your brother were touched by a great darkness; it only made you stronger and brighter.”

               Luke smiled sadly, putting his hand on his father’s arm.

               “Can someone explain to me what the hell is going on?” Han demanded, shattering the moment. “Can we _please_ cut through this mumbo-jumbo and tell me why my son is here, unconscious—“

               Ben stirred, his face screwing up at Han’s shouting. “Daddy,” he grumbled, then opened his eyes, taking in his surroundings.

               “Daddy!” he said, holding out his arms. Han snatched him from Anakin’s grasp.

               “Ben, are you OK? What happened, sweetheart?” he asked, urgently. Ben rubbed at his eyes.

               “Grandfather showed me something,” he said. “And now I…I feel different.”

               “Different?!”

               “I feel…” Ben thought for a long moment. “Better.”  

               “Are you sure? What did he do? Why—“

               “Han,” Leia said, quietly. He looked at her, lost. “I’ll explain everything, I promise— _after_ breakfast.  It’s going to be a long day.” Anakin looked down at her, confused.

               “We’re going to be packing your things,” she clarified, looking up at him, almost daring him to refuse.

               “Packing?” Luke asked. Anakin couldn’t bring himself to speak—he tensed, he hoped—

               “Yes,” Leia said, admitting defeat. “He’s coming back with us.”

               “What?” Han asked, incredulous. “But—why? What happened?!”

               “I want grandfather to come back with us!” Ben demanded, tugging on the collar of Han’s shirt. “I want him to live in our house now!”

               “The terms of amnesty—“ Anakin began, reluctantly, but Leia cut him of with a sharp gesture. 

               “Circumstances have changed. We’ll deal with it.”   

               Luke looked between her and Anakin, his expression unreadable. “You want Father to teach Ben?”

               “It’s because you—I mean, it’s nothing that you did, but—look, I can explain more when we—“ Leia started, but Luke only smiled.

               “I am so glad,” he said. “At last.” He looked up at Anakin, relieved and joyful: “I _knew_ you could do it. I just—didn’t know how.”

               “There was no failure in your teachings, Luke,” Anakin rumbled. “The monster was well hidden—but like knows like.”

               “And you can tell him all about it,” Leia assured him. “After breakfast.”

               “I want fishes!” Ben announced.

               “How do we ask, young man?” Han bounced him, sternly.

               “Please!”

               “Of course. Anything for you, little one.” Anakin replied. He turned to Leia giving her a long look.

“Anything.”

               She half-smiled. It was more bitter than sweet, but she accepted the truth of his words.

“I know.” Then:

               “Let’s go home.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really was going to kill Vader and I........I couldn't do it lol 
> 
> Thanks for reading, I've been trying some new stuff here-- trying to see if I could writer a shorter, less literal piece. Appreciate yall putting up with it


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